Voting
The Abbreviated Approach on Deciding Your Demise in the Death World a.k.a '''How to Vote in Marked For Death: The Short Version Voting in MfD is done via approval vote, but there are usually no options to vote on, and is instead open-ended. Players make action plans which specify what to do which are then voted on. The idea of this post is to break down the unwritten rules and established practices of voting so that new players don't have to comb through the 600+ page thread looking for answers. Beyond the direct quote from eaglejarl below, what follows is more of a guideline than a set of actual rules. '''Basic Voting The first step is to follow the instructions in this quote in order to make sure your vote will be registered properly. To recap: X 'and '+ add your vote to the tally, - removes it. That's how the counter bot will count the votes. But before you can effectively participate you need to understand what sort of things you can vote for. In theory we can vote for anything, but in practice most of the voting is centered around long player made plans where one player tries to incorporate ideas and suggestions from rest of the participants. There are usually two kinds of plans you can vote for: Action Plans and Training Plans. Action Plans Action Plans list actions Hazou attempts to do in the next update. These plans cover the battle plans, negotiation strategies, what to buy for teammates' birthdays and basically all the big decisions Hazou will make during the quest. You can vote for as many actions plans as you want, but only the one that gets most votes is implemented. The established voting format for an action plan is: [] Action Plan: ' Examples: 'X Action Plan: Kill the Hokage X Action Plan: Save the Hokage Here's an example Action Plan so you can recognize one in the wild. The Third Hokage might have followed something like this in the original series. X Action Plan: Will of Fire Protect Konoha and the Will of FIRE at all costs and don't forget to enjoy the chuunin exam finals. Goals # Protect the village # Don't let any of my cute students die # Survive Method # Go and observe the chuunin exam finals with the Kazekage ## Remember to smoke your pipe like a boss ## Root for Naruto, the kid is going to need it ##* Even so, put some money down on the Hyuuga kid ## If the Kazekage tries to start something, use Diplomacy ##* If that doesn't work, INTIMIDATE ##** If THAT doesn't work, cut the bitch # Make sure the village is prepared for hostilities ## Cancel leave time for everyone ## Prepare the shelters for non-combatants ## Deploy sneaky ninjas everywhere (we do have sneaky kind of ninjas, right?) # Make sure Kakashi shows up in time #* Seriously, send at least two messengers hawks #** Maybe also an ANBU "escort"? Contigencies # Wear combat armor under your robes ## Make sure to stock up on explosive tags # If things get dangerous, summon Genma # If things get REALLY dangerous, use Shiki Fuujin to take care of the the opposition Anyone who wants to can write an action plan, and there are no strict rules on what should be included in one. The important thing is that the QMs can understand what Hazou wants to do in the next update and that the voters understand what the plan is all about. The plans are usually written by one player who tries to incorporate suggestions made by other into their original idea. This is usually done through editing the original plan and as a voter you should check back before the deadline to see if there have been any major revisions to the plans you have voted for. That being said, the best way to get what you want is to make your own plan. Stealing parts of other peoples' plans is not only allowed but also encouraged. If someone tries to complain about it, you may courteously tell them to go and blow a goat resolve the conflict through reasonable dialogue and polite discourse. If writing a plan seems like too much work, the best way to participate beyond voting is giving critique on already established plans. Pointing out specific flaws and giving alternative courses of actions is really helpful. The most convenient suggestions for a planner are the ones that can be just copy pasted straight into the plan, so take a moment to think about the wording and presentation of your suggestions. That being said, there are a few limitations imposed upon action plans. For QM's sanity, actions plan are limited to less than 300 words with 1 XP bonus incentive. Anything over 400 words begin to accrue penalties. This cut down overplanning and force the players to focus. Training Plans Training Plans cover buying new skill levels for Hazou and PC-teammates with XP and doing original research. Researching new tech with Sealcraft or Jutsu Hacking takes the same time slot as normal training, which is why research attempts are also considered to be training plans. These plans are character specific, meaning only one training plan can win per character. They are usually formatted like so: [] Training : ' Examples: 'X Training Hazou: Taijutsu 20 ''' X Training Hazou: Research Explosive Tags X Training Keiko: Super Sneaky Ninja' Training plans are simpler to write and they are usually not edited, except for typos and the like. Once again there's no one way to write them but the important thing is to list what skills are leveled, how much XP is spent, put everything in order of preference and make sure the plan is legible for QMs and player alike. Costs and requirements of skills can be found from System Rules Document and the current XP and Skills for the characters can be found from their respective character sheets. Personally I like to use the following template when writing training plans: '[] Training : ' [] [] [] ... Save XP Here's an example: Hazou has 15 XP to spend and he wants to get '''Taijutsu 3', Control 2 and Shadow Clone Jutsu 2. X Training Hazou: Excessive Fisting Taijutsu 1 1 Taijutsu 2 3 Taijutsu 3 6 Control 2 10 Shadow Clone Jutsu 1 11 Shadow Clone Jutsu 2 13 Save 2 XP A training plan doesn't have to include exact numbers in it. If you want, you can just give general orders like "Train Sealing as much as possible", just remember to word the plan clearly so that the QMs don't have to make guesses on what you want. For XP plans we also have a special XP bank for each character, where we can put XP in for safekeeping. It's purely a bookkeeping trick to make sure we don't accidentally spend XP we are saving for important skills on impulse buys. If you want to access the XP in the bank it has to be explicitly stated in your XP plan. For example, if Hazou just received 30 XP thanks to an awesome action plan and you want to bank it all in the Rainy Day Fund, you could write the following XP plan. X Training Hazou: For A Rainy Day Deposit 30 XP to Rainy Day Fund Later, if you want to raise Hazou's Hunting skill to 6 but he has no normal XP left, you can access the banked Rainy Day Fund with a plan like this: X Training Hazou: Master Hunter Withdraw 20 XP from Rainy Day Fund // Here we take the XP out of the fund Hunting 2 2 Hunting 3 5 Hunting 4 9 Hunting 5 14 Hunting 6 20 Saved 0 XP Rainy Day Fund 10 XP // It's good form to make sure the voter knows how much will be left in the fund after the plan It's also good to remember that you can vote to not spend any XP. In fact, if you don't have a strong opinion on what to vote for a specific character, it's usually safer to vote against spending XP, rather than waste precious XP on useless skills. The default no vote training plan is: X Training : Nope ''' ''' Other Kinds of Plans Action and Training plans are the ones people usually make, but there are two notable exceptions. [] Proto-Plans 'are meant as preliminary plans to gather good ideas and promote discussion. You shouldn't vote for one, but feel free to comment on them and steal the parts you like (or the whole thing!) for your own plans. '[] Lore Update means that you vote to not move the story on, instead you want to see a lore update focusing on the world, history and characters of MfD-verse Hazou normally doesn't have access to. Lore updates are a safety measure in case we can't come up with a workable plan in time, or the only plan with any votes is a really bad one. QMs have a veto to not give us a lore update if they don't feel like it, so only vote for lore updates when you feel like we actually need one. General Vote Tally Issues If the winning action plan and the winning training plan are mutually exclusive, say there's no time to train with the winning action plan, the conflict is usually resolved in favor of the action plan. In the case of a tie between two plans, the QMs get to pick which plan wins. Usually they pick the shorter plan or the one that is more convenient to write for. Voting Etiquette Voting quickly is usually frowned upon. It's better to discuss things and map out possible options before committing to the first plan you see. It's also good practice to check the thread again closer to the deadline to see if there's a reason to change your vote. Sometimes people get really good (or really bad) ideas an hour or two before the deadline. If you want to deploy humor or use joke votes in general, please us tags like jk, evil,' jashin' etc. instead of the normal vote tags X,' +' or -. It's really annoying when the winning plan is something like X Kill Everything and Eat the Corpses when there is 30 minutes left in the voting deadline. Shorter plans are generally better than longer ones, if there's too much stuff in the plan the QM will get stressed and this generally leads to Bad Things. As I mentioned earlier, this was meant as a guideline for new players and not as an exhaustive list of everything there is to do with voting. If you are still confused on how or what to vote for, just post your question to the thread. Usually there's someone around who at least pretends to know what is going on.